AGRA: In a case that seems straight out of an Agatha
Christie potboiler, a parrot turned detective and helped nab its mistress'
killer.

The question of who murdered Neelam Sharma, 45, and
her pet dog, had been baffling the city police for almost a week till they got
a clue provided by Hercule, the parrot.

Neelam, wife of Vijay Sharma, the editor of a Hindi
daily, was found murdered at her residence on February 20. Her husband noticed
a change in the behaviour of the parrot whenever his nephew Ashutosh visited
their house after the murder.

"During discussions too, whenever Ashutosh's name
was mentioned, the parrot would start screeching. This raised my suspicion and
I informed the police," said Sharma. […]

Saturday, February 22, 2014

[One of two of Mississippi John Hurt’s songs that were
included on the seminal collection, Anthologyof American Folk Music, was] this
gorgeous piece of fingerpicking called “Frankie’s Blues.” It was a beautiful
arrangement, and when those albums came out in the early 1950s, we all
immediately set ourselves to learn that thing. It was incredibly fast, though,
and after a week or two I dropped by the wayside. A few persisted, and my
friend Barry Kornfeld, for one, disappeared into his chambers and emerged six
weeks later, blinking like a mole, and he had it. Note for note, just as clean
and fast as on the record.

When I first saw John at the Café Yana, there he was
playing “Frankie’s Blues.” I noticed that it was a lot slower than on the
record. Of course, he was a good deal older, but it also struck me that it
sounded better at that tempo. I wanted to ask him about it, but I wanted to be
as diplomatic as possible – I didn’t want to just say, “So, Pops, can’t cut it
anymore, eh?” Very tentatively, I said, “You know that ‘Frankie’ thing you
played…”

Apparently, I was not the first person to have asked,
because John intervened and saved me any further embarrassment. He just smiled
and said, “Oh, you want to know why it’s so much slower than on the record?”

I said, “Yeah…”

He said, “Well, you know, that song was so long that
they had to speed it up to get it on one side of a 78.”

All I could think of was Barry, sidelined with acute
carpal tunnel syndrome.

[In his notes in the booklet accompanying the 1997
reissue of the Anthology, John Fahey
writes that it was rumored that when Hurt’s version of “Frankie” “was played
for Segovia, he couldn’t believe there were not two guitars at work” (p. 10).]